Leitura: uma felicidade clandestina

Abstract

Felicidade Clandestina (Clandestine Happiness), a short story by Clarice Lispector, narrates the story of a character who loves books. In this narrative, the narrator presents the ways the main character starts to get interested in books, due to her “anxiety to read”, when the narrator notices, in her childhood, an “illusory”, clandestine happiness. The young reader yearned to borrow the book, which belonged to a wicked girl, who did not lend it to her, telling her the book is not with her. Her agony ends when the bad girl’s mother lends the anxious reader the desired book. At this time, it is observed the mysterious presence of the book, as an instrument of trangression and transformation of a linear reality. Having the book in her hands gives her an indecipherable feeling of happiness. Like other characters who are readers, the girl searches for reading as if it were a lover, and its possession gives her and indecipherable happiness. She enjoys and is strongly delighted by that “clandestine happiness”.